PLEASE TAKE TIME TO WATCH THIS
EIGHT MINUTE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6DmjBneGBc
Monday, February 16, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
FEAR MONGERING!
by Steve Fair
by Steve Fair
Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end.
In 1933 in the depths of the depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first Inaugural Address. In it, FDR said, “ This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
It seems the Democrats in Congress and President Obama are using fear as a tactic against the American people to ramrod the stimulus bill through Congress. The bill is full of fishhooks and barbwire that ample time should be allowed for legislators to read, study, and review the details in the bill. But Democrats are saying we don’t have time to study- if the bill is not passed immediately, the sky will fall-the sun will not raise in the east- Americans will be out of work- starving in the streets and worst of all members of Congress might not get re-elected.
This fear the Democrats are cultivating has a purpose and that is to scare Americans into supporting bad legislation. Like any other emotion, fear has both positive and negative aspects. Negative fear is debilitating. Positive fear is exhilarating. Life is boring without fear. Successful leaders constantly search for new, risky ventures. They even consciously focus on doing things that other people are afraid to do; go places where others fear to tread.
Today on Good Morning America, Radio talk show host and debt hater Dave Ramsey was interviewed. Ramsey said he thought it was the best time to buy a house in forty years. He said it was a great time to start a small business. He didn’t seem afraid or fearful, but optimistic and upbeat. Is Ramsey simply clueless to what’s happening around him? NO- far from it! He is a professing Christian and he knows all the hype and fear mongering espoused by the Prez and the Democrats is designed to keep them in power- not help the American public. As Kipling said, "If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs....."
America was a victim of terrorism on September 11, 2001. Nearly three thousand people died at the hand of Muslim terrorists. Seven plus years later, 305,000,000 Americans are being terrorized by our President and the Congress by pushing a bill through Congress without due diligence being performed. Normally getting something done in Washingon is like pushing a peanut up a hill with your nose-it's not easy and it takes time. Whenever Congress gets in a big rush, the American people can be sure they are about to get the dirty end of the stick. These FEAR tactics are dishonest and disingenious. Americans should demand transparency and accountability in the stimilus bill before it passes Congress.
It seems the Democrats in Congress and President Obama are using fear as a tactic against the American people to ramrod the stimulus bill through Congress. The bill is full of fishhooks and barbwire that ample time should be allowed for legislators to read, study, and review the details in the bill. But Democrats are saying we don’t have time to study- if the bill is not passed immediately, the sky will fall-the sun will not raise in the east- Americans will be out of work- starving in the streets and worst of all members of Congress might not get re-elected.
This fear the Democrats are cultivating has a purpose and that is to scare Americans into supporting bad legislation. Like any other emotion, fear has both positive and negative aspects. Negative fear is debilitating. Positive fear is exhilarating. Life is boring without fear. Successful leaders constantly search for new, risky ventures. They even consciously focus on doing things that other people are afraid to do; go places where others fear to tread.
Today on Good Morning America, Radio talk show host and debt hater Dave Ramsey was interviewed. Ramsey said he thought it was the best time to buy a house in forty years. He said it was a great time to start a small business. He didn’t seem afraid or fearful, but optimistic and upbeat. Is Ramsey simply clueless to what’s happening around him? NO- far from it! He is a professing Christian and he knows all the hype and fear mongering espoused by the Prez and the Democrats is designed to keep them in power- not help the American public. As Kipling said, "If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs....."
America was a victim of terrorism on September 11, 2001. Nearly three thousand people died at the hand of Muslim terrorists. Seven plus years later, 305,000,000 Americans are being terrorized by our President and the Congress by pushing a bill through Congress without due diligence being performed. Normally getting something done in Washingon is like pushing a peanut up a hill with your nose-it's not easy and it takes time. Whenever Congress gets in a big rush, the American people can be sure they are about to get the dirty end of the stick. These FEAR tactics are dishonest and disingenious. Americans should demand transparency and accountability in the stimilus bill before it passes Congress.
Monday, February 9, 2009
CENSUS MOVE IS POLITICAL!
President Obama has said his COS, Rahm Emanuel, would be "overseeing" the 2010 census from the White House. This move is unprecedented and can only be political. The Census primary purpose is to determine population by state and for equal allocation of the 435 US House members.
It would appear Obama and his crowd plan to "jury" rig the process to get more "D"s elected. Republicans-particularly those with the last name of Steele- should be on their feet and letting the people know about this move. The Census is constitutionally mandated- Article 1-section 2- and was first conducted in the US in 1790. If Republicans sleep through this grab, then look for "R"s to be in the minority until 2020 in the House. Read the entire story at:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/09/gop-sounds-alarm-obama-decision-census-white-house/
Weekly Opinion/Editorial
A D I E U!
by Steve Fair
by Steve Fair
Senate Democrats made a deal with three RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) to pass a $780 billion dollar stimulus package this week. The House version of the bill has $819 billion in it, so the two plans will have to be reconciled before they go back for a final vote in each chamber and ultimately land on President Obama’s desk.
The stimulus package is pork laden and will only grow government, but at least we know the government is spending that money. Senator Tom Coburn, R- Oklahoma, is working to identify earmarks and pork in the bill and thank God we have him in the Senate but what about the money we don’t know about? According to Mark Pittman and Bo Ivry at Bloomberg.com, the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the FDIC have lent or spent almost three trillion dollars in the past two years and have pledged another six trillion. Pittman and Ivry say the money pumped into the economy by the three agencies is enough to pay off more than ninety percent of the nation’s mortgages or enough to write a $1430 check to every person alive in the world. That’s a pile of money and most of the spending has been done out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with no oversight or transparency. The new Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, served as President of the FRB of New York.
The Fed and the FDIC have not disclosed who got the commitments in lending programs and guarantees, which amounted to almost two thirds of the value of everything produced in the United State last year. “We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country, "Senator Byron Dogran, D-North Dakota, said on the Senate floor last week. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose.” “How much from TARP?” How much from the FDIC? When? Why? "Dogran exclaimed to a nearly empty Senate chamber.
What is TARP? TARP is the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and according to Amy Barnett of Businessweek, TARP has gone from being an asset purchase program to a capital investment program. Barnett says the government has or will invest $250 billion in the nation’s banks through the TARP program and not just in banks that are in trouble, but those who are just not lending because of the economic enviroment. The hope is that new capital will get banks lending again. But that is not the stated purpose of TARP. Where is the oversight? Where is the transparency and accountability?
Newsweek’s February 9th edition features a story entitled, We are all Socialists now. The story outlines how the U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. “Whether we want to admit it or not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas state. “We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements,” Meacham and Thomas confidently state.
If we raise our children believing that government, not God will provide their needs, they will become dependent on government, not God. If we raise our children to believe that no one is directly responsible for anything, but everyone is reponsible collectively for everything, they will become slackers. If we teach our children there is no moral absolutes, they will embrace situational ethics. A fundamental principle for us to remember is what we excuse in moderation, our children will abuse in excess.
The stimulus package is pork laden and will only grow government, but at least we know the government is spending that money. Senator Tom Coburn, R- Oklahoma, is working to identify earmarks and pork in the bill and thank God we have him in the Senate but what about the money we don’t know about? According to Mark Pittman and Bo Ivry at Bloomberg.com, the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the FDIC have lent or spent almost three trillion dollars in the past two years and have pledged another six trillion. Pittman and Ivry say the money pumped into the economy by the three agencies is enough to pay off more than ninety percent of the nation’s mortgages or enough to write a $1430 check to every person alive in the world. That’s a pile of money and most of the spending has been done out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with no oversight or transparency. The new Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, served as President of the FRB of New York.
The Fed and the FDIC have not disclosed who got the commitments in lending programs and guarantees, which amounted to almost two thirds of the value of everything produced in the United State last year. “We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country, "Senator Byron Dogran, D-North Dakota, said on the Senate floor last week. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose.” “How much from TARP?” How much from the FDIC? When? Why? "Dogran exclaimed to a nearly empty Senate chamber.
What is TARP? TARP is the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and according to Amy Barnett of Businessweek, TARP has gone from being an asset purchase program to a capital investment program. Barnett says the government has or will invest $250 billion in the nation’s banks through the TARP program and not just in banks that are in trouble, but those who are just not lending because of the economic enviroment. The hope is that new capital will get banks lending again. But that is not the stated purpose of TARP. Where is the oversight? Where is the transparency and accountability?
Newsweek’s February 9th edition features a story entitled, We are all Socialists now. The story outlines how the U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. “Whether we want to admit it or not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas state. “We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements,” Meacham and Thomas confidently state.
If we raise our children believing that government, not God will provide their needs, they will become dependent on government, not God. If we raise our children to believe that no one is directly responsible for anything, but everyone is reponsible collectively for everything, they will become slackers. If we teach our children there is no moral absolutes, they will embrace situational ethics. A fundamental principle for us to remember is what we excuse in moderation, our children will abuse in excess.
Meacham and Thomas go on to say, “As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French. This is not to say that berets will be all the rage this spring, or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.”
The real issue in America is no one is paying attention to their government. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister and six-time socialist candidate for President said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Weekly Opinion/Editorial
spend·thrift n. One who spends money recklessly or wastefully.
STIMULUS PACKAGE IS PORK LADDEN!
by Steve Fair
by Steve Fair
If you were mired in credit card debt and had hot checks all over town, would you confidently state, “I’m going to spend my way out of this mess?” Not likely! Your creditors would laugh at you for your completely illogical strategy to handle your economic crisis, but that’s exactly what President Obama said in early January. “At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” Mr Obama said. “Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy.”
The reason we are in the economic mess we are in is because government’s mandated lending to unqualified, irresponsibile people, but Obama still believes government is going to save our bacon after getting us into this mess?
There is a precedent of “priming the pump” or stimulating the economy . Presidents Kennedy and Reagan pushed for economic stimulus monies that placed monies into the hands of taxpayers, but it wasn’t spent on government programs. The $850 billion dollar stimulus bill that passed the house last week is nothing more than a huge spending bill according to U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, R-OK. Inhofe says the bill provides tax refunds for people who don’t pay taxes and gives checks of up to a $1,000 to illegal immigrants.
Inhofe points out the bill is loaded with pork that has nothing to do with helping the economy. It has $30 billion for federal building improvements, $1.5 billion for homeless prevention, $650 million for digital TV coupons, $650 million for wildlife management, $600 million for the federal government to buy new enviromentally friendly cars. It also includes $570 million for climate change and $75 million for stop smoking activities.
The bill is being scrutinized increasingly by Republicans and economists because it doles out billions of taxpayer dollars for everything from the 2010 census to university research to contraceptives at family-planning clinics - areas far removed from the meltdown in finance, housing and automotive industries.
On Sunday, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said on CNN that they would have a hard time voting for the House bill. “It would be hard for me to vote for it,” Collins said of the House bill, one of four Republicans senators who supported a version of the bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Collins is a moderate at best and often breaks rank with Republicans in the Senate.
The reason we are in the economic mess we are in is because government’s mandated lending to unqualified, irresponsibile people, but Obama still believes government is going to save our bacon after getting us into this mess?
There is a precedent of “priming the pump” or stimulating the economy . Presidents Kennedy and Reagan pushed for economic stimulus monies that placed monies into the hands of taxpayers, but it wasn’t spent on government programs. The $850 billion dollar stimulus bill that passed the house last week is nothing more than a huge spending bill according to U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, R-OK. Inhofe says the bill provides tax refunds for people who don’t pay taxes and gives checks of up to a $1,000 to illegal immigrants.
Inhofe points out the bill is loaded with pork that has nothing to do with helping the economy. It has $30 billion for federal building improvements, $1.5 billion for homeless prevention, $650 million for digital TV coupons, $650 million for wildlife management, $600 million for the federal government to buy new enviromentally friendly cars. It also includes $570 million for climate change and $75 million for stop smoking activities.
The bill is being scrutinized increasingly by Republicans and economists because it doles out billions of taxpayer dollars for everything from the 2010 census to university research to contraceptives at family-planning clinics - areas far removed from the meltdown in finance, housing and automotive industries.
On Sunday, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said on CNN that they would have a hard time voting for the House bill. “It would be hard for me to vote for it,” Collins said of the House bill, one of four Republicans senators who supported a version of the bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Collins is a moderate at best and often breaks rank with Republicans in the Senate.
“Same thing for me,” said Nelson, who appeared alongside Collins, and who is among the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. “It would be very difficult for me to vote for (for the House bill). I hope that doesn’t happen.”“I like parts of it, that are based on infrastructure,” Nelson continued, “but there’s an awful lot of spending in it that I think is questionable.”
“I think all of us support the fact that we need to do something,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said Sunday on ABC's This Week. “And all of us believe that the way to move our economy forward and protect jobs is to infuse more money so that consumers have more to spend, businesses have more to invest, buy capital equipment.”“But there are two ways to do that,” DeMint continued. “One is for the government to take it out of the private sector through taxes and then decide where it's going to go through political manipulation, as they've done in the House. The other is just to leave more money in the private sector for consumers to spend and businesses to invest.”
The Hertiage Foundation has identified three basic problems with the supposed pump priming tool. First, it places too much money back into the hands of government and not into the private sector. Second, it increases the already out of control national debt. Third, the most expensive items in the program are proven losers.
Webster defines stimulus as, “something that incites to action or exertion or quickens action.” The House bill does none of that—it only panders to special interest and is business as usual for the Democrats.
“I think all of us support the fact that we need to do something,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said Sunday on ABC's This Week. “And all of us believe that the way to move our economy forward and protect jobs is to infuse more money so that consumers have more to spend, businesses have more to invest, buy capital equipment.”“But there are two ways to do that,” DeMint continued. “One is for the government to take it out of the private sector through taxes and then decide where it's going to go through political manipulation, as they've done in the House. The other is just to leave more money in the private sector for consumers to spend and businesses to invest.”
The Hertiage Foundation has identified three basic problems with the supposed pump priming tool. First, it places too much money back into the hands of government and not into the private sector. Second, it increases the already out of control national debt. Third, the most expensive items in the program are proven losers.
Webster defines stimulus as, “something that incites to action or exertion or quickens action.” The House bill does none of that—it only panders to special interest and is business as usual for the Democrats.
Friday, January 30, 2009
MICHAEL STEELE ELECTED RNC CHAIRMAN!
Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele was elected RNC Chairman on the sixth ballot. He is the first black to be elected to the post. Read the entire story at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50T6JU20090130?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
I will watch with interest Governor Steele's leadership of the national party. He is moderate politically at best and has not been a big fan of the Christian right. He seems to pander to the big money in the party.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50T6JU20090130?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
I will watch with interest Governor Steele's leadership of the national party. He is moderate politically at best and has not been a big fan of the Christian right. He seems to pander to the big money in the party.
A real problem for the GOP in November was their unwillingness to embrace a STRONG GROUND GAME. TV, print ads, and new media are great for defining a candidate, but engaging the voter face to face is fundamental to winning races and the national party has abandoned that time honored strategy. Money is necessary in politics, but arms and legs on the street will beat money EVERY TIME if organized and executed with effeciency.
Ken Blackwell was a man that understood that premise--I'm not sure Steele does. As a party activist, Steele will have to convince me his interests are organizing the base and not using the Chairman's post as a stepping stone to further his political career. Republicans needed an organizer and a motivator at this point in time and I'm not sure Steele is the right choice, but I will reserve judgment until I see what his game plan is. If it's the same old raise money and hire consultants to spend it, then look for Republicans to stay in the minority in Washington for the next couple of decades.
Steve
Steve
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